


#02 Cuddling somewhere

by 221_french_bee



Series: 30 Days OTP Challenge [10]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Awkward Romance, Cuddling & Snuggling, Established Relationship, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, M/M, Shameless Smut, Shy Sherlock Holmes, Tumblr: sherlockchallenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-29
Updated: 2019-03-29
Packaged: 2019-12-25 11:52:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18260726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221_french_bee/pseuds/221_french_bee
Summary: After chasing a criminal, John and Sherlock find themselves locked on a empty rooftop. With nothing to do, John is soon pretty bored and cold. Sherlock tries to remedy to that.





	#02 Cuddling somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> This work is both part of my ungoing 30 Days of OTP series, as well as my entry for the March 2019 sherlockchallenge: "Locked".  
> Go and have a look at the other entries as well! sherlockchallenge(dot)tumblr(dot)com
> 
> This chapter hasn't been beta-read, so please let me know if I made any mistakes as English is not my first language. And as always, Kudos and review are always appreciated :)

“Quick John! This way!”

John raced at his left, following Sherlock's hurried voice. Their ragged breaths were loud on the darkened corridors of the office building, the sound of their chase echoing on the empty hallways as they rushed to catch the burglar. A band had been streaking on an industrial area in South London for several months, always at night or early morning, stealing important industrial information in various offices. Classified documents and reports where then sold to rival firms, or used as blackmail to extort more money. The London police financial team was unable to track the money to any precise location, so Sherlock has been called to explore the field. With Lestrade affected to the case with the task of “monitoring” him, Sherlock and John had spent the afternoon at the latest crime scene.

In 20 minutes, Sherlock had deduced the height, shoe size, stance and favorite meal of the burglar, the probable place of next robbery, insulted the whole London police force as well as made the CEO secretary flee the office in tears after he revealed that her boss has clearly no intention to leave his wealthy wife for her.  
John had quickly exfiltrated Sherlock and left Lestrade’s team deal with the furious said CEO as they took a cab to the next location.

The detective and his blogger had staked out behind offices doors for hours, waiting until night had fall on the empty offices cubicle. The moon was already high in the sky when a sound had finally pieced the air. Sherlock had jolted from his hiding place, thrown the door of the CEO office open, only to catch a glimpse of the man in front of the open safe before he disappeared by another door. John had tried to stop him, but the guy was not an amateur, and he escaped from John’s grip like a snake.  
So here were, chasing the principal suspect through darkened company’s buildings, the blogger racing after his mad detective.

John was breathing sonorously, trying not to stumble as he raced after Sherlock and his long legs. They were hot on his heels, but the man was a fast runner, gaining advance on the stairs to the upper floor. Sherlock thought they had him cornered at the last floor, but when he emerged on the lobby the hallway was empty.  
John caught up with him and they stood in the dark hallway, trying to calm their frantic breaths, both attentive to the tiniest noise.

A metallic sound echoed on the air. Sherlock turned, his coat whooshing around him as he yelled.

“The roof!”

They resumed running, taking the stairs two by two, hurtling on the roof by the heavy access door left open by the burglar. They separated to look for the suspect, slowly making their ways between chimneys and electrical cabinet  
The wind was howling, making John slightly bend as he made his way around every corners. He met Sherlock at the end of the roof, but the detective only shook his head. They made a last swoop of the whole rooftop, only helped by the meagre light of their small flashlight, but they finally had to admit defeat, the suspect had evaporated.

“Vanished, damn it!” swore John. “Do you want to try to come down? Maybe we can try to catch him at the entrance?”

“No need”, dismissed Sherlock “we've stayed too long on the rooftop; he will be too far ahead”, he pushed a sweaty curl away from his face, “Moreover; he is just a small piece of the puzzle. He can't be the man we are looking for, he runs with too much weight on his right leg to have left the footprint we found. He has at least one accomplice and we need to catch all of them”

“If you said so”, said John, still slightly out of breath. They were making their ways to the exit when a loud slamming noise made them flinch. They looked at each other with worry.

“John, you've thought to block the door open before coming out, don't you?”

“I...”

John remained frozen in place, mouth open in horror as Sherlock reached for the door, which only rattled when he tried to turn the handle. They both tried to open it, but gave after a few minutes, hands stiff with cold.

“We're trapped!”

John took few steps back.

“Get out of the way, I'll try to break it.”

Sherlock didn't even move at this display of testosterone. He simply rattled the door one last time and listened to the dull sound it made when pushed.

“Don't bother, it's too thick. And he had probably blocked the handle with some kind of metal rod, judging by the sound. You’ll just harm yourself in the process”.

“Fair point”, conceded John, “But we can't spend the night here. Do you think that if I tried to make S.O.S. signals with my flashlight someone will see it? Or I can try to let myself slip into one of the ventilation duct?”.  
Sherlock looked at him for a second, eyebrows raised.

“Those ideas are brilliant John.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“Of course. Unpractical, and with a fairly highly percentage of failure, but still brilliant. And because I don't plan to stay the night neither here nor in the A&E, I'm simply going to call Lestrade to tell him to fetch us.”  
John rolled his eyes as Sherlock extracted his phone from his coat with a smug smile, quickly dialing the DI's number.

“Lestrade! Where are you?” he barked when the DI answered his phone.

“Following the lead at Canary Wharf, like you requested.”

“It's a dead end! Come to fetch us! There is nothing more to be done tonight.”

“Is there a problem?”, asked Greg. John and Sherlock didn’t usually needed to be brought back home after a chase.

“Nothing to concern you about”, dismissed Sherlock, well aware that the DI’s team was probably listening to their conversation and reluctant to admit that they have been trapped like a couple of idiots, “I’ll text you the address. You'll have to get to the rooftop of the main building, following the stairway number 2. Just come quickly.”  
He sent their location to the DI phone, listening to his mutter as he located them on his car’s GPS.

“Ok, give me three quarters of an hour.”

Both men hung up, then Sherlock turned back at John.

“Three quarters of an hour,” repeated him.

John blew an exasperated sigh.

“Not like we have a choice. We’ll wait, then”

They sat down at the foot of one of the electrical cabinet, bringing the skirts of their cloak around them in order to be protected from the strong wind. Sherlock immediately put his hands under his chin, closing his eyes as he went to his mind palace to review the evidence they collected so far.

John soon found himself pretty bored. There was nothing interesting to look at on the roof, his phone battery was long dead, and the end of the adrenaline rush caused by the chase left him chilly and slightly dizzy. He hunkered down with his knees close to his chest, trying to calm his spinning head. But as the thrill of the chase faded, biting cold took its place.  
John’s coat wasn’t as warm as Sherlock's and the cut was shorter, making him feel the cold from the concrete floor coming through the fabric of his jean, freezing his arse and backside. After a few minutes, his feet were properly numb, and he was clenching his jaw to prevent his teeth from chattering.

“You're shivering”.

Sherlock’s voice seemed unusually loud in the emptiness of the night and the faint buzz from the electrical cabinet.

“No shit,” answered John, his tone a bit more sharp than intended.

Sherlock opened his eyes, gazing at his blogger’s profile. In the dim light provided by a lonely street lamp, John’s face was wan, his lips pursed in a thin line and his sandy blond eyebrows gathered.

“Are you hurt?”

“Beside my dignity? Nope, I didn’t even had the chance of a good fight.”

Sherlock looked as John opened and closed his fists in rapid succession.  
“Are you… mad at me?” asked Sherlock cautiously. “Because I’ve let him escape and you didn’t even had the chance to- “

“No Sherlock That’s not...” John sighed. Since they had become a couple, Sherlock had been trying to be more mindful of John’s feelings. Especially during cases, after John had confessed feeling left aside by some of Sherlock’s habits, such as dashing out and expecting everyone, and particularly John, to catch up with him, both mentally and physically. But years of poor communication and constant bullying by nearly everyone he had met had left Sherlock with a poor grid to analyze his lover’s reactions. John had to be careful not to let Sherlock reads his flash of temper as anger or exasperation towards him. It had forced John to be more mindful of his reactions, sometimes even helping him analyze the hidden reasons for his outbursts. But tonight he was awfully aware of the reason of his misery. “Sherlock, I'm just... I’m cold okay?”.

Sherlock’s “oh” was almost silent.

John forced a pinched smile. “I wish we were somewhere else. Like, warm at home in front of the fireplace, you see?”.

Sherlock kept looking at him in bemusement before offering “Is there something I can do?”.  
John had a chuckle before gazing at him “Well, unless you have a portable radiator hidden under that big coat of yours, I guess I just have to bare up until Greg arrive and put us out of our misery.”

John was curling up tighter against his legs to save as much heat as possible but Sherlock’s voice made him still.

“Well, I can do nothing for the fireplace, but… come here?”

John looked at him in disbelief. Sherlock had spread his arms toward him, keeping his coat open with a tiny inviting smile.

“You want me to...”, asked John incredulously.

“I’m offering you a place under that ‘big coat of mine’ as you so elegantly put it.”

As John was still frozen in place, Sherlock rolled his eyes. “My coat is bigger than yours, and that way we can share body heat while we're waiting. Hurry up, John, I'm not exactly warm either”, he finished crisply. This, at least, seemed to shock John out of his immobility. Detangling his stiff limbs, he crawled to sit between the detective parted legs, his back against Sherlock's torso.  
The detective quickly shot his arms close, wrapping John into his coat. They shifted a moment, trying to find a comfortable position. John more compact size helped them to arrange him, his head twisted against Sherlock’s neck and his legs cradled between Sherlock’s long ones. They intertwined their hands on John’s stomach, and he quickly started to feel the warmth spreading in his limbs through the layers of clothes. He slowly relaxed, settling a bit more into Sherlock’s arms. The detective shifted slightly, and John felt Sherlock fondle his cheek against his temple.  
The soft fabric of Sherlock’s scarf was warm from his body against John’s forehead, and released smells of sweat and home. John closed his eyes and almost felt a press of lips against his scalp.

“You could have told me if you wanted a cuddle, you know,” he said jokingly.

Sherlock only response was to embrace him tighter. John smiled fondly and raised his head to kiss the part of Sherlock’s jaw he was able to reach. Sherlock shyly dropped his head, hiding his flaming cheeks from John’s gaze. John didn’t push him, simply nestling his face against the mop of curl on his shoulder. They stayed immobile a long moment, listening to the roar of the wind, John eyes on the sky while the detective preferred to keep his face buried in John’s neck. John finally broke the silence.

“You know, it's too bad we don't have stars.”

“It's impossible in central London, John,” said Sherlock with a muffled voice, “The light of the city makes the sky too bright for us to dicern-”

“I know,” interrupted John gently with a shrug, “It's just... I would have been more romantic, you know? Cuddling under the stars...”

“Are the stars a requirement for a cuddle to be romantic?”

Sherlock tone was detached, as usual careful not to betray his inexperience in relationship. John frowned, considering his answer honestly. Sure, he would have never considered cuddling in a rooftop by night while freezing his ass as “romantic”. But that was before. Before Sherlock. Before becoming SherlockandJohn. They weren’t following any of the patterns John had had in his previous relationship. They had never been to a movie together, Sherlock had never brought him breakfast in bed, and John had never bought him flowers. And even when they did do something that could have been considered romantic, such as dining at Angelo’s with a candle on the table, they were speaking about crime scene, dead bodies or international art trafficking. 

They never went for a romantic stroll on the pack, hand in had. But they had hectic chases after renowned criminals, fit of giggles at crime scene and bickers about the appropriate place of body parts in a fridge. As everything they did together, it was _their_ definition of romantic. And John wouldn’t want things another way.  
So he huddled up even more on Sherlock’s embrace, turning his head to put his lips against Sherlock’s temple.

“No, I figure you are right,” he said “Everything is perfectly romantic that way.”

 


End file.
